Robert Green Love Quotes & Sayings

The doctrine of immortality rests upon human affection. We love; therefore, we wish to live. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The place of horror turns out to be no more than a green scoop, sometimes shadowed, sometimes shining with the bilberries and grass within it, as if a mouth had opened from which streamed a beam of light. So my uncle Robert's death, which had looked from a distance to be an all-consuming tragedy was, close-up, the story of a man finding release from his pain and how his brother had showed such defiant love. The past was a grave, a trap - and yet, also neither of these. Just light, coming and going.
At the wolf pit you imagine you will stare into a hole littered with bones, but what draws you to that place is not what you take from it. The wolf pit seems a delicate illusion. You walk towards it; there is nothing, just a curve of the moor; then it is a soft green light, and then it is nothing again. — Will Cohu

The whip degrades; a severe father teaches his children to dissemble; their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul. — Robert Green Ingersoll

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men. — Robert Green Ingersoll

It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Love is the only bow of life's dark cloud. It is the Morning and Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb. It is the Mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot, and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home, kinder of every fire on every hearth, it was the first dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings of common clay ... — Robert Green Ingersoll

I believe that labor is a blessing. It never was and never will be a curse. It is a blessed thing to labor for ... the ones you love. It is a blessed thing to have an object in life - something to do - something to call into play your best thoughts, to develop your faculties and to make you a man. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Taste and love are not the servants of the will. Love is and must be free. It rises from the heart like perfume from a flower. — Robert Green Ingersoll

When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected - and this life with which men are in love is represented in a thousand forms. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are. — Robert Green Ingersoll

If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne. — Robert Green Ingersoll

But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Environment is a sculptor - a painter. If we had been born in Constantinople, then most of us would have said: 'There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.' If our parents had lived on the banks of the Ganges, we would have been worshipers of Siva, longing for the heaven of Nirvana. As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they teach, and take great pride in saying that the religion of mother is good enough for them. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I do not think there is a person in this world who has been a more ardent admirer of him than I have been. His life and work have been an inspiration to the whole earth, shedding light in the dark places which so sadly needed light. His memory calls forth my most sincere homage, love, and esteem.

{Burbank on the great Robert Ingersoll, whom he admired so much that he requested Ingersoll's eulogy for his brother, Ebon Ingersoll, to be read at his own funeral} — Luther Burbank

Love your friends and be just to your enemies. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I belong to the Great Church which holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar - his life has been a success. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Across the years I will walk with you -
in deep green forests; on shores of sand:
and when our time on earth is through,
in heaven, too, you will have my hand — Robert Sexton

The closer I'm bound in love to you, the closer I am to free. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race. — Robert Green Ingersoll

If cathedrals had been universities If dungeons of the Inquisition had been laboratories If Christians had believed in character instead of creed If they had taken from the bible only that which is GOOD and thrown away the wicked and absurd If temple domes had been observatories If priests had been philosophers If missionaries had taught useful arts instead of bible lore If astrology had been astronomy If the black arts had been chemistry If superstition had been science If religion had been humanity The world then would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy — Robert Green Ingersoll

Character survives; goodness lives; love is immortal. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music. — Robert Green Ingersoll

My Heart's In The Highlands
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
Chorus.-My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, &c. — Robert Burns

I love to think of the whole universe together as one eternal fact. I love to think that everything is alive; that crystallization is itself a step toward joy. I love to think that when a bud bursts into blossom: it feels a thrill. I love to have the universe full of feeling and full of joy, and not full of simple dead, inert matter, managed by an old bachelor for all eternity. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing and blossoming tells of love and joy — Robert Green Ingersoll

Do right, not to deny yourself but because you love yourself and because you love others. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The intelligent and good man holds in his affections the good and true of every land
the boundaries of countries are not the limitations of his sympathies. Caring nothing for race, or color, he loves those who speak other languages and worship other gods. Between him and those who suffer, there is no impassable gulf. He salutes the world, and extends the hand of friendship to the human race. He does not bow before a provincial and patriotic god
one who protects his tribe or nation, and abhors the rest of mankind. — Robert Green Ingersoll

In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Most people are Democrats because they hate something; most people are Republicans because they love something. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent, to borrower and lender both. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song. — Robert Green Ingersoll

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing that we are not to have in the other world. We are to be so taken up with Jesus and angels, that we shall care nothing about our brothers and sisters that have been damned. We shall be so carried away with the music of the harp that we shall not even hear the wail of father and mother. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Love is natural. Back of allceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world's history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love. — Robert Green Ingersoll

And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach. — Robert Green Ingersoll

We all know that men in moderate circumstances can have just as comfortable houses as the richest, just as comfortable clothing, just as good food. They can see just as fine paintings, just as marvelous statues, and they can hear just as good music. They can attend the same theaters and the same operas. They can enjoy the same sunshine, and above all, can love and be loved just as well as kings and millionaires. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Robert G. Ingersoll was a great man. a wonderful intellect, a great soul of matchless courage, one of the great men of the earth -- and yet we have no right to bow down to his memory simply because he was great. Great orators, great soldiers, great lawyers, often use their gifts for a most unholy cause. We meet to pay a tribute of love and respect to Robert G. Ingersoll because he used his matchless power for the good of man.

{Darrow's eulogy for Ingersoll at his funeral} — Clarence Darrow

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud-and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing. — Robert Green Ingersoll

A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers. — Robert Green Ingersoll

He who treats his friends and enemies alike, has neither love nor justice. — Robert Green Ingersoll

{Letter from Debbs to Eva Ingersoll, husband of Robert Ingersoll, just after the news of Robert's death}

We were inexpressibly shocked to hear of the sudden death of your dear husband and our best loved friend. Most tenderly do we sympathize with you, and all of yours in your great bereavement... Gifted with the rarest genius, in beautiful alliance with his heroism, his kindness and boundless love, he made the name of Ingersoll immortal.

To me, he was an older brother and as I loved him living, so will I cherish his sweet memory forever. — Eugene V. Debs

Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with the eternal stars
an intellectual ocean
toward which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their dew and rain. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others. — Robert Green Ingersoll

To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honorable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artis en life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbor. — Robert Louis Stevenson

They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. — Robert Green Ingersoll

All I have to say is, Love one another - that is the height of all philosophy. It is beyond all religions. It is the secret of joy - the fountain of Perpetual Youth - the only rainbow on life's dark cloud. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Instead of loving a God, we love each other. Instead of the religion of the sky-the religion of this world-the religion of the family-the love of husband for wife, of wife for husband-the love of all for children. So that now the real religion is: Let us live for each other; let us live for this world without regard for the past and without fear for the future. Let us use our faculties and our powers for the benefit of ourselves and others, knowing that if there be another world, the same philosophy that gives us joy here will make us happy there. — Robert Green Ingersoll